


ice cold knuckle sandwich

by misura



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, background Palamedes Sextus > Dulcinea Septimus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:48:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28131171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: The one time Palamedes punched someone.
Relationships: Camilla Hect & Palamedes Sextus
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2020





	ice cold knuckle sandwich

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quantumvelvet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumvelvet/gifts).



Palamedes realized his hand hurt. It seemed unfair that this would be so, that punching someone in the face would hurt the person doing the punching as well as the person getting punched.

"Warden!" Camilla said, and he suppressed a near-irreprisble urge to tell her, _'did you see what I just did? Cam, did you see?'_ , because he wasn't twelve anymore and anyway, the expression on her face told him that she had, indeed, seen.

"He said - " Pointless: if she'd been there to see the punch, she'd have been there to hear what had brought it on. "It wasn't your fight," he offered instead. "This one was personal."

Camilla radiated disapproval. "I'm your cavalier."

Palamedes scoffed. " 'A healthy mind in a healthy body.' What nonsense!"

"He didn't mean anything by it, Sextus. King Undying, it's just something people say. Like 'an apple a day keeps the doctor away'. Or 'break a leg'."

"Nobody in the Sixth would ever tell someone to break a leg," Palamedes said, then reconsidered. "Or, well, they might, but they'd mean it literally. They wouldn't be saying it as some cheap, ignorant balderdash." Bones were more of a Ninth specialty, but the Sixth being the Sixth, that didn't mean people didn't still try.

"Again: he didn't mean to imply anything about your Lady Septimus."

"I know that!" Palamedes felt himself turn red all the same. "And she's not _my_ Lady Septimus."

"I'm just saying, if you're going to walk around punching people every time you get one of her letters from here on out - " ("I'm not, Cam, come on, that would be stupid," Palamedes said.) " - we might need to talk."

"We're talking right now," Palamedes pointed out. He wished Camilla would leave him alone so that he could do something about his hand, except that she was right: he'd wronged her, and he deserved much worse than some bruised knuckles. "We talk all the time."

"About lessons," Camilla said, and then _she_ was turning red.

"Oh." Palamedes felt uncomfortably, embarrassingly surprised. "I - there are classes on how to punch people?" He realized Camilla had combat training, of course, but he'd sort of assumed that this would involve, well, dueling and how to disarm bombs and how to tell when someone was firing rocket missiles at you.

Camilla sighed. "Yes, Warden." She narrowed her eyes. "Wait, do you mean you didn't study up on how to do this beforehand? You just ... went and did it?"

"Of course not!" Palamedes decided that stung worse than his hand. "I read a book."

Camilla stared at him. "You read a book."

Palamedes didn't see what was so strange about that. He read books all the time. He imagined a lot of Camilla's combat training had involved reading books as well. "Yes, but it didn't include a warning about how much it would hurt."

Camilla blanched. Palamedes wished someone would come and punch him in the face right now.

"Which is not that much at all," he said quickly. "It feels a lot better already."

"Ice," Camilla said, shaking her head. "We're going to put some ice on it."

Palamedes frowned. Self-inflicted injuries from punching someone weren't his field of expertise - in fact, he suspected that in all of the Sixth, self-inflicted injuries from punching someone weren't _anyone's_ field of expertise, but even so, 'put some ice on it' sounded rather primitive.

"I thought I'd try this experimental ointment," he said. "Kill two birds with one stone."

A mistake: Camilla poked him in the chest with her index finger. "See? See? You do it, too. If someone would hit you right now for suggesting someone ought to murder their pet birds, would you think that was reasonable, rational behavior?"

"You've told me several times I'm making an idiot of myself over Lady Septimus."

"That sounds like a 'no' to me," Camilla said.

Palamedes swallowed. "If you think putting some ice on it is best, then please, let's do that."

"All right." Camilla took a deep breath. "We'll chalk this one up as your introduction to the club of people doing stupid shit for love. By which I mean that yes, okay, I'm letting you off the hook. Once."

"If I plan on future punching, I'll know who to approach for lessons," Palamedes said.

"If you plan on future punching, you'd best plan again," Camilla said, starting to walk in the direction of her room. Presumably, she had ice there. "I'm your cavalier, not your nursemaid, Warden."

 _I told you, this was personal_ dueled _one flesh, one end_. Palamedes didn't think he was wrong, but he also knew Camilla was right. "Sorry, Cam."

Camilla grumbled a bit, then: "First time I hit a practice dummy, I thought I'd broken it. My hand, not the dummy. So how bad is it?"

"Nothing broken," Palamedes said. "Ice sounds like a great idea."

"Obviously. Unlike some people, I know what I'm doing," Camilla said.

"Can I read you her letter?" Palamedes knew better than to ask any question beginning with 'would you lke me to' when it came to Lady Septimus. Which was fair; Camilla had every right to her own opinion, and one day, Camilla might be the one 'doing stupid shit for love' and then Palamedes would support her and listen to her and agree that whomever it was was indeed great and amazing. (They would not, of course, be worthy of Camilla considering them as such, but that was fine. He'd keep that thought to himself.)

"Yes, fine, Sextus, you can read me your beloved Lady Septimus's letter. One time," Camilla warned. "And while I can promise I won't make fun of _her_ , I won't promise not to make fun of you."

"As always, you're too kind."

"Damn right I am. Now, let's get you some ice."


End file.
